This thread isn’t about the Resurrection
per se, which is why I didn’t place it in the Christianity forum. The Resurrection happens to be a favorite topic of militant atheists who like to ridicule Christianity as being only for credulous dolts (“Corpses don’t just get up and fly away”), so I will use it to make my larger points.
In other threads, Transponder has chided me and other believers for wanting to focus on “how we think about the evidence” rather than on “the evidence.” Harry Diogenes has beaten the drum of Bayesian probability analysis, despite folks as diverse as Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, a professor at Cornell University who is a Ph.D. in Statistics and our beloved Irkle telling him that this approach just doesn’t work in analyzing metaphysical claims.
Bayes’ Theorem is used to analyze the probability of a hypothesis (“Jesus rose from the dead”) in terms of a given body of data. The result is the ratio of “the unconditional probability of the conjunction of the hypothesis with the data to the unconditional probability of the data alone.” Huh? Irkle, unlike Harry, doesn’t claim to be a Bayesian whiz kid, but here’s a good article if you’re interested:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bayes-theorem/. This also is quite good:
https://brilliant.org/wiki/bayes-theorem/.
Let’s say Irkle claims nothing special for Grannie Firkle except that her recipe for rhubarb pie was the envy of all the women in Ashtabula. Oh, wait, he does claim that when she died and had been entombed in 2004, shortly thereafter she rose bodily from the dead and ascended into the clouds to the astonishment of Irkle and his mother Twirkle.
Insofar as Grannie Firkle's resurrection is concerned, the evidence, whatever it may be, will be rather limited. The claims will be subject to fairly straightforward Bayesian analysis that takes into account the billions of other grannies and similarly ordinary folk who have not risen from the dead and ascended into the clouds.
Even though Irkle is convinced of what he saw, he’ll have to agree the Baysesian probability is pretty much zero. (Basically, a Baysesian ratio of 0 means false, while a ratio of 1 means true.) Nevertheless, Irkle may well say “Who cares about Bayesian probability? I know what I and Mama saw.” If all evidence suggests Irkle’s and Twirkle’s senses and faculties are operating properly, Irkle may be entirely justified in incorporating Firkle’s resurrection into his belief system even if no one else does so.
But what about Jesus? Atheists apply the same analysis to Jesus that they do to Grannie Firkle. This is precisely the mistake that the philosopher Hume made in his famous work on miracles. He analyzed miracles solely in terms of their likelihood given trillions of non-miraculous events and what he saw as the fixed laws of the universe. Indeed, Reverend Bayes arrived at his famous theorem in an effort to show the flaws in Hume’s reasoning. Virtually every philosopher now recognizes that Hume’s work, which was long regarded as the last word on miracles, is deeply flawed.
The Christian claim is that Jesus, unlike Grannie Firkle, was the one and only son of God and that his Resurrection was a unique event in human history. How would we apply Bayes’ Theorem to this?
We would have to proceed as Irkle has described his own spiritual quest. We would first have to decide between atheism, deism and theism. Evidence from many, many scientific disciplines is relevant to this question, as are vast bodies of non-scientific evidence as well as philosophical and theological arguments. We’d have to subjectively assign all sorts of probabilities to all sorts of evidence to arrive at a Bayesian ratio for the hypothesis “A theistic god exists” (or “doesn’t exist”). In almost every instance, this assignment would be largely subjective and influenced by personal biases and predispositions.
Assuming theism seemed to remain a viable option, we’d move on to a hypothesis like “Christianity is the most (or least) plausible theistic option.” This would involve a similarly complex and subjective Bayesian analysis (or pretense of one).
Assuming Christianity seemed to remain a viable option, we’d move on to a hypothesis like “The Resurrection occurred (or didn’t occur) as what would have been observable as a historical, real-world event.” This would involve a similarly complex and subjective Bayesian analysis (or pretense of one).
If I had concluded that theism had only a 2% likelihood of being correct, and Christianity had only a 4% likelihood of being the correct theistic explanation, by the time I got to the Resurrection the likelihood would be “It’s complete nonsense, not worth discussing.” If my likelihoods had been 98% and 98%, however, very little would be required for the Resurrection to be entirely plausible and I’d assigned high probabilities to every line of evidence.
Hence, one author applied Bayesian analysis to arrive at a 67% likelihood for the existence of God. Atheist Michael Shermer considered precisely the same lines of evidence and arrived at a likelihood of 2%. Shermer wisely deemed the exercise silly.
The point? This sort of “scientific analysis” is nonsense. It produces the illusion of “scientific certainty” where there is absolutely none. Religious belief or atheistic non-belief is a matter of personal conviction, not probability analysis.
But wait, there’s more: Someone like Harry arrives at his probabilities by insisting that all we’re allowed to consider is objective, scientifically verifiable evidence. This simply stacks the deck against religious claims. People make huge life decisions every day on the basis of whatever evidence, testimony, experience, arguments and inferences seem relevant to them, without regard to whether everything is objective and scientifically verifiable. Harry is certainly entitled to his approach, but it’s artificially restrictive.
Contrary to what Harry and Trans suggest, “how we think about the evidence” – what philosophers call epistemology – really is the central question. Atheists don’t get to set artificial rules for believers. We can’t have rational discussions on these forums because atheists and believers have entirely different epistemologies (meaning what constitutes knowledge and whether beliefs are rational and justified)
.
I say the probability the Resurrection really occurred is “very high.” Transponder and Harry say “very low.” Neither of which tells us anything about the Resurrection, even if Trans or Harry attempts to create the illusion of objectivity by assigning a Bayesian ratio. The issue with respect to the Resurrection is simply what evidence and arguments
you deem relevant over a wide variety of disciplines and what convictions
you reach at each stage of the inquiry.
I've read a number of books where Christian scholars debate the Resurrection with atheist scholars. I'm always surprised that the debate proceeds as though we were talking about Grannie Firkle, as though the issue were simply whether a first-century guy named Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into the clouds. Framed in this way, even I would agree with the atheists that the better conclusion is "No, he didn't." But as someone who has arrived at strong convictions regarding theism and Christianity, I can rationally look at the same evidence and say "I'm satisfied he did."
And that's why the vast majority of threads go round and round but never really go anywhere.
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